________________
MARCR, 1902.)
NOTES ON MALAGASY CURRENCY.
109
NOTES ON MALAGASY CURRENCY BEFORE THE FRENCH OCCUPATION.
BY R. C. TEMPLE.
From the Notes of the Rev. C. P. Cory. ALL payments were made in vakim-bola,“ broken money," made up of chips of the A five-frano piove. Every chip had to have some recognisable portion of the five-franc piece on it to pass as currency. With that proviso a chip of any size would be accepted, however small. The chips were weighed out by the purchaser.
The currency of the country was in fact such chips of silver by weight. But, as an exception, the full five-franc piece would be accepted in payment, and dollars of sorts were also passed. The number of the only coins thus in circulation being naturally limited, as there was no native mint, the Native Government put a factitious value on the whole coin, which was 1/12th or 81% in excess of the value of the pieces of the coin cut up and passed by weight : 1. e., the five-franc piece untouched was worth 81% more than its weight when cot up. This was done in order to prevent the reckless cutting up of the coin. The above percentage was thus arrived at. The Malagasy unit of ourrency was & red seed called voamena : 24 voamena went to the five-franc piece: the excess value of the whole coin over its parts by weight was made to be 2 voamena.
For the purposes of its currency the Native Government issued standard weights, and ang tampering with these weights was a grave offence. A man using a false weight in any of the large markets would in all probability have been immediately stoned to death without trial.
Scale of Weights. 10 variraiventy make 1 eranambatry 3 eranambatry do. 1 voamena 3 voamena
do.
1 sikajy 2 siksjy
1 kirobo 2 kirobo
1 loso 2 logo
1 ariary or farantea
720 variraiventy do. 1 ariary or farantes In the above scale, up to the voamena, the units are native Malagasy seeds : beyond that they represent parts of the dollar. Thus : ariary is the Spanish dollar or real, through the Arabic ar-ricil, while the farantea merely represents the name "French" and is used for the five. franc piece. The torm ariary is used usually, but not always, for the dollar made up of cu parts, i.e., for the dollar of account. Loso (pron. lúshu) is for the Arabic word nisf, half, through Swahili nusf: kirobo (pron. kiribu) is the Arabic rubs, & quarter, with the common Malagasy and Swahili prefix ki: sikajy (pron. sikdiz) is the Turkish sekiz, eight (sekinji, an eighth) through Arabic and Swahili. There are other and false derivations curreat for lcirobo and sikajy: viz., that kirobo represents the Arabic coin kharrabah, and that sikajy represent the Italian scudo or crown. But these identifications do not fit in, because the kirobo obviously weighed 90 grs., whereas the kharrúbah was only 3 grs. The kirobo corresponds in teality to the Arabic great copper fols, which was 90 ges. Again, the sikayy at 45 grs is only an eighti of the Italian sudo of 360 grs. Whereas the Spanish dollar and its parts came naturally to Madagascar from the slave-dealing Arabs, who had their head-quarters on the Swahili Coast.
1 Latterly the Government had began to coin five-frano pieces on its own woount.
* It was affected by adding to the standard weights made for woighing the parts, not by adding a value to the upout coin.
